Complete weird tales of.., p.731
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 731
* * *
“That,” said the novelist, “is another slice of fact which would never do for fiction. Besides I once read a story somewhere or other about a dog bringing two people together.”
“The theme,” I observed, “is thousands of years old.”
“That’s the trouble with all truth,” nodded Duane. “It’s old as Time itself, and needs a new suit of clothes every time it is exhibited to instruct people.”
“What with new manners, new fashions, new dances, and the moral levelling itself gradually to the level of the unmoral,” said Stafford, “nobody on the street would turn around to look at the naked truth in these days.”
“Truth must be fashionably gowned to attract,” I admitted.
“We of the eccentric nobility understand that,” said the little Countess Athalie, glancing out of the window; and to me she added: “Lean over and see whether they have stationed a policeman in front of the Princess Zimbamzim’s residence.”
I went out on the balcony and glanced down the block. “Yes,” I said.
“Poor old Princess,” murmured the girl. “She detests moving.”
“All frauds do,” remarked Duane.
“She isn’t a fraud,” said Athalie quietly.
Our silence indicated our surprise. After a few moments the girl added:
“Whatever else she may be she is not a fraud in her profession. I think I had better give you an example of her professional probity. It interested me considerably as I followed it in my crystal. She knew all the while that I was watching her as well as the very people she herself was watching; and once or twice she looked up at me out of my crystal and grinned.”
“Can she see us now?” I inquired uneasily.
“No.”
“Why not?” asked Duane.
“I shall not tell you why.”
“Not that I care whether she sees me or not,” he added.
“Do you care, Harry, whether I see you occasionally in my crystal?” smiled Athalie.
Duane flushed brightly and reminded her that she was too honourable to follow the movements of her personal friends unless requested to do so by them.
“That is quite true,” rejoined the girl, simply. “But once I saw you when I did not mean to.”
“Well?” he demanded, redder still.
“You were merely asleep in your own bed,” she said, laughing and accepting a lighted match from me. Then as the fragrant thread of smoke twisted in ghostly ringlets across her smooth young cheeks she settled back among her cushions.
* * *
XXI
“THIS,” SHE SAID, “will acquaint you in a measure with the trustworthiness of the Princess Zimbamzim. And, if the policeman in front of her house could hear what I am going to tell you, he’d never remain there while his legs had power to run away with him.”
* * *
They met by accident on Madison Square, and shook hands for the first time in many years. High in the Metropolitan Tower the chimes celebrated the occasion by sounding the half hour.
“It seems incredible,” exclaimed George Z. Green, “that you could have become so famous! You never displayed any remarkable ability in school.”
“I never displayed any ability at all. But you did,” said Williams admiringly. “How beautifully you used to write your name on the blackboard! How neat and scholarly you were in everything.”
“I know it,” said Green gloomily. “And you flunked in almost everything.”
“In everything,” admitted Williams, deeply mortified.
“And yet,” said Green, “here we are at thirty odd; and I’m merely a broker, and — look what you are! Why, I can’t go anywhere but I find one of your novels staring me in the face. I’ve been in Borneo: they’re there! They’re in Australia and China and Patagonia. Why the devil do you suppose people buy the stories you write?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Williams modestly.
“I don’t know either, though I read them myself sometimes — I don’t know why. They’re all very well in their way — if you care for that sort of book — but the things you tell about, Williams, never could have happened. I’m not knocking you; I’m a realist, that’s all. And when I read a short story by you in which a young man sees a pretty girl, and begins to talk to her without being introduced to her, and then marries her before luncheon — and finds he’s married a Balkan Princess — good-night! I just wonder why people stand for your books; that’s all.”
“So do I,” said Williams, much embarrassed. “I wouldn’t stand for them myself.”
“Why,” continued Green warmly, “I read a story of yours in some magazine the other day, in which a young man sees a pretty girl for the first time in his life and is married to her inside of three quarters of an hour! And I ask you, Williams, how you would feel after spending fifteen cents on such a story?”
“I’m terribly sorry, old man,” murmured Williams. “Here’s your fifteen — if you like — —”
“Dammit,” said Green indignantly, “it isn’t that they’re not readable stories! I had fifteen cents’ worth all right. But it makes a man sore to see what happens to the young men in your stories — and all the queens they collect — and then to go about town and never see anything of that sort!”
“There are millions of pretty girls in town,” ventured Williams. “I don’t think I exaggerate in that respect.”
“But they’d call an officer if young men in real life behaved as they do in your stories. As a matter of fact and record, there’s no more romance in New York than there is in the annual meeting of the British Academy of Ancient Assyrian Inscriptions. And you know it, Williams!”
“I think it depends on the individual man,” said Williams timidly.
“How?”
“If there’s any romance in a man himself, he’s apt to find the world rather full of it.”
“Do you mean to say there isn’t any romance in me?” demanded George Z. Green hotly.
“I don’t know, George. Is there?”
“Plenty. Pl-en-ty! I’m always looking for romance. I look for it when I go down town to business; I look for it when I go home. Do I find it? No! Nothing ever happens to me. Nothing beautiful and wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice ever tries to pick me up. Explain that!”
Williams, much abashed, ventured no explanation.
“And to think,” continued Green, “that you, my old school friend, should become a celebrity merely by writing such stories! Why, you’re as celebrated as any brand of breakfast food!”
“You don’t have to read my books, you know,” protested Williams mildly.
“I don’t have to — I know it. But I do. Everybody does. And nobody knows why. So, meeting you again after all these unromantic years, I thought I’d just ask you whether by any chance you happen to know of any particular section of the city where a plain, everyday broker might make a hit with the sort of girl you write about. Do you?”
“Any section of this city is romantic enough — if you only approach it in the proper spirit,” asserted Williams.
“You mean if my attitude toward romance is correct I’m likely to encounter it almost anywhere?”
“That is my theory,” admitted Williams bashfully.
“Oh! Well, what is the proper attitude? Take me, for example. I’ve just been to the bank. I carry, at this moment, rather a large sum of money in my inside overcoat pocket. My purpose in drawing it was to blow it. Now, tell me how to blow it romantically.”
“How can I tell you such a thing, George — —”
“It’s your business. You tell people such things in books. Now, tell me, face to face, man to man, how to get thoroughly mixed up in the sort of romance you write — the kind of romance that has made William McWilliam Williams famous!”
“I’m sorry — —”
“What! You won’t! You admit that what you write is bunk? You confess that you don’t know where there are any stray queens with whom I might become happily entangled within the next fifteen minutes?”
“I admit no such thing,” said Williams with dignity. “If your attitude is correct, in ten minutes you can be up against anything on earth!”
“Where?”
“Anywhere!”
“Very well! Here we are on Madison Square. There’s Admiral Farragut; there’s the Marble Tower. Do you mean that if I walk from this spot for ten minutes — no matter in what direction — I’ll walk straight into Romance up to my neck?”
“If your attitude is correct, yes. But you’ve got to know the elements of Romance when you see them.”
“What are the elements of Romance? What do they resemble?” demanded George Z. Green.
Williams said, in a low, impressive voice:
“Anything that seems to you unusual is very likely to be an element in a possible romance. If you see anything extraordinary during the next ten minutes, follow it up. And ninety-nine chances in a hundred it will lead you into complications. Interfering with other people’s business usually does,” he added pleasantly.
“But,” said Green, “suppose during the next ten minutes, or twenty minutes, or the next twenty-four hours I don’t see anything unusual.”
“It will be your own fault if you don’t. The Unusual is occurring all about us, every second. A trained eye can always see it.”
“But suppose the Unusual doesn’t occur for the next ten minutes,” insisted Green, exasperated. “Suppose the Unusual is taking a vacation? It would be just my luck.”
“Then,” said Williams, “you will have to imagine that everything you see is unusual. Or else,” he added blandly, “you yourself will have to start something. That is where the creative mind comes in. When there’s nothing doing it starts something.”
“Does it ever get arrested?” inquired Green ironically. “The creative mind! Sure! That’s where all this bally romance is! — in the creative mind. I knew it. Good-bye.”
They shook hands; Williams went down town.
* * *
XXII
THIS PICTURE IS not concerned with his destination. Or even whether he ever got there.
But it is very directly concerned with George Z. Green, and the direction he took when he parted from his old school friend.
As he walked up town he said to himself, “Bunk!” several times. After a few moments he fished out his watch.
“I know I’m an ass,” he said to himself, “but I’ll take a chance. I’ll give myself exactly ten minutes to continue making an ass of myself. And if I see the faintest symptom of Romance — if I notice anything at all peculiar and unusual in any person or any thing during the next ten minutes, I won’t let it get away — believe me!”
He walked up Broadway instead of Fifth Avenue. After a block or two he turned west at hazard, crossed Sixth Avenue and continued.
He was walking in one of the upper Twenties — he had not particularly noticed which. Commercial houses nearly filled the street, although a few old-time residences of brownstone still remained. Once well-to-do and comfortable homes, they had degenerated into chop sueys, boarding houses, the abodes of music publishers, artificial flower makers, and mediums.
It was now a shabby, unkempt street, and Green already was considering it a hopeless hunting ground, and had even turned to retrace his steps toward Sixth Avenue, when the door of a neighbouring house opened and down the shabby, brownstone stoop came hurrying an exceedingly pretty girl.
Now, the unusual part of the incident lay in the incongruity of the street and the girl. For the street and the house out of which she emerged so hastily were mean and ignoble; but the girl herself fairly radiated upper Fifth Avenue from the perfectly appointed and expensive simplicity of hat and gown to the obviously aristocratic and dainty face and figure.
“Is she a symptom?” thought Green to himself. “Is she an element? That is sure a rotten looking joint she came out of.”
Moved by a sudden and unusual impulse of intelligence, he ran up the brownstone stoop and read the dirty white card pasted on the façade above the door bell.
THE PRINCESS ZIMBAMZIM
TRANCE MEDIUM. FORTUNES.
Taken aback, he looked after the pretty girl who was now hurrying up the street as though the devil were at her dainty heels.
Could she be the Princess Zimbamzim? Common sense rejected the idea, as did the sudden jerk of soiled lace curtains at the parlour window, and the apparition of a fat lady in a dingy, pink tea-gown. That must be the Princess Zimbamzim and the pretty girl had ventured into these purlieus to consult her. Why?
“This is certainly a symptom of romance!” thought the young man excitedly. And he started after the pretty girl at a Fifth Avenue amble.
He overtook and passed her at Sixth Avenue, and managed to glance at her without being offensive. To his consternation, she was touching her tear-stained eyes with her handkerchief. She did not notice him.
What could be the matter? With what mystery was he already in touch?
Tremendously interested he fell back a few paces and lighted a cigarette, allowing her to pass him; then he followed her. Never before in his life had he done such a scandalous thing.
On Broadway she hailed a taxi, got into it, and sped uptown. There was another taxi available; Green took it and gave the driver a five dollar tip to keep the first taxi in view.
Which was very easy, for it soon stopped at a handsome apartment house on Park Avenue; the girl sprang out, and entered the building almost running.
For a moment George Z. Green thought that all was lost. But the taxi she had taken remained, evidently waiting for her; and sure enough, in a few minutes out she came, hurrying, enveloped in a rough tweed travelling coat and carrying a little satchel. Slam! went the door of her taxi; and away she sped, and Green after her in his taxi.
Again the chase proved to be very short. Her taxi stopped at the Pennsylvania Station; out she sprang, paid the driver, and hurried straight for the station restaurant, Green following at a fashionable lope.
She took a small table by a window; Green took the next one. It was not because she noticed him and found his gaze offensive, but because she felt a draught that she rose and took the table behind Green, exactly where he could not see her unless he twisted his neck into attitudes unseemly.
He wouldn’t do such things, being really a rather nice young man; and it was too late for him to change his table without attracting her attention, because the waiter already had brought him whatever he had ordered for tea — muffins, buns, crumpets — he neither knew nor cared.
So he ate them with jam, which he detested; and drank his tea and listened with all his ears for the slightest movement behind him which might indicate that she was leaving.
Only once did he permit himself to turn around, under pretense of looking for a waiter; and he saw two blue eyes still brilliant with unshed tears and a very lovely but unhappy mouth all ready to quiver over its toast and marmalade.
What on earth could be the matter with that girl? What terrible tragedy could it be that was still continuing to mar her eyes and twitch her sensitive, red lips?
Green, sipping his tea, trembled pleasantly all over as he realised that at last he was setting his foot upon the very threshold of Romance. And he determined to cross that threshold if neither good manners, good taste, nor the police interfered.
And what a wonderful girl for his leading lady! What eyes! What hair! What lovely little hands, with the gloves hastily rolled up from the wrist! Why should she be unhappy? He’d like to knock the block off any man who ——
Green came to himself with a thrill of happiness: her pretty voice was sounding in exquisite modulations behind him as she asked the waiter for m-more m-marmalade.
In a sort of trance, Green demolished bun after bun. Normally, he loathed the indigestible. After what had seemed to him an interminable length of time, he ventured to turn around again in pretense of calling a waiter.
Her chair was empty!
At first he thought she had disappeared past all hope of recovery; but the next instant he caught sight of her hastening out toward the ticket boxes.
Flinging a five-dollar bill on the table, he hastily invited the waiter to keep the change; sprang to his feet, and turned to seize his overcoat. It was gone from the hook where he had hung it just behind him.
Astonished, he glanced at the disappearing girl, and saw his overcoat over her arm. For a moment he supposed that she had mistaken it for her own ulster, but no! She was wearing her own coat, too.
A cold and sickening sensation assailed the pit of Green’s stomach. Was it not a mistake, after all? Was this lovely young girl a professional criminal? Had she or some of her band observed Green coming out of the bank and thrusting a fat wallet into the inside pocket of his overcoat?
He was walking now, as fast as he was thinking, keeping the girl in view amid the throngs passing through the vast rotunda.
When she stopped at a ticket booth he entered the brass railed space behind her.
She did not appear to know exactly where she was going, for she seemed by turns distrait and agitated; and he heard her ask the ticket agent when the next train left for the extreme South.
Learning that it left in a few minutes, and finding that she could secure a stateroom, she took it, paid for it, and hastily left without a glance behind her at Green.
Meanwhile Green had very calmly slipped one hand into the breast pocket of his own overcoat, where it trailed loosely over her left arm, meaning to extract his wallet without anybody observing him. The wallet was not there. He was greatly inclined to run after her, but he didn’t. He watched her depart, then:
“Is there another stateroom left on the Verbena Special?” he inquired of the ticket agent, coolly enough.
“One. Do you wish it?”
“Yes.”
The ticket agent made out the coupons and shoved the loose change under the grille, saying:
